1. Field of the Invention
The invention is generally relates to upstream channel bonding.
2. Background Art
Cable television (CATV) systems are no longer limited to only providing television programs to viewers. In addition, CATV systems provide internet access, and/or other services to consumers via signals transmitted to customer premises by optical fibers, coaxial and other cables, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth®, etc., all in contrast to traditional over-the-air radio wave broadcasting of television programming.
The CATV system may utilize Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) compliant equipment and protocols to carry out a transfer of information, such as video, audio, and/or data between one or more set-top devices and one or more cable modem termination systems (CMTS). The DOCSIS Specification generally refers to a group of specifications published by CableLabs® that define industry standards for CMTS, cable modems (CMs) and control for set-top devices. In part, the DOCSIS specification sets forth requirements and objectives for various aspects of cable modem systems including, but not limited to, operations support systems, management, data interfaces, network layer, data link layer, and physical layer transport for data over cable systems. The DOCSIS interface specification entitled “Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specifications, DOCSIS 3.0, MAC and Upper Layer Protocols Interface Specification, CM-SP-MULPIv3.0416-110623” is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
A DOCSIS cable system includes two primary components: one or more cable modems at a customer premises, and a CMTS located at a headend. As used herein, the term “downstream” refers to the transfer of information in a direction from the CMTS to the cable modems. The term “upstream” refers to the transfer of information in a direction from cable modems to the CMTS.
As the number of upstream channels for a cable modem increases, the complexity of upstream channel bonding increases exponentially. For each channel added to an upstream bonded channel group, monitoring and tracking functions performed by a cable modem for each additional upstream channel increases as well. For example, for each upstream channel, a cable modem has to store and monitor the time of a request for bandwidth, how much bandwidth is requested, which upstream channel the bandwidth is requested on, how much bandwidth was granted, a time at which a bandwidth grant was received and on which downstream channel the grant was received on. Thus, increased hardware and software complexity is required of the cable modem to store and monitor bandwidth requests as more upstream channels are added.
The present invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers may indicate identical or functionally similar elements.